D&D 1E How/How Often Did you award XP in 1E AD&D?

[el-remmen]

Note the TAG. . . this question is about 1E (though anyone who played B/X or BECMI is welcome to chime in - not interested in later editions (for now)).

So I started a poll thread about awarding XP (or not) in 5E because I wanted to see how people did it and if I was as much of an outlier as I thought I might be and the answer (so far) is that I was even more of an outlier than I thought I was in actually tabulating XP and giving out that amount (mostly for monsters killed) at what I consider milestones (either at the end of an adventure or after a definitive part of a long module before moving on to the next part). Thus I give out XP every 3 to 6 sessions (at most). (I usually only award XP during downtime).

So once I realized I am the odd man out in what I considered the "typical" way, I started wondering why did I think this was the typical way? And then I wondered, did I get this tack from my earliest days playing B/X and 1E?

So that is my question, if you played 1E back in its heyday how often was XP awarded back then and under what conditions? I know back then treasure was also a big part of XP as was magical items (in some groups). Am I just taking the idiosyncratic approach of the groups I started with as standard and that was not all that common at all?

If you still play 1E (or its offshoots) regularly now, you can also chime in - but I am most interested in back in the day (let's say approximately from 1977 to 1989)

 

[pogre]

Following each session - usually 4 to 6 hours in length.

 

[Musing Mage]

I still run 1e, and my method is to award XP when a scenario is done and the characters are safely back at a port of haven where they can tabulate rewards and treasure, regardless of how many sessions it takes.

That gives players the chance to discuss loot division, which will affect how much XP is earned by the individual characters.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Following each session - usually 4 to 6 hours in length.

Yup. End of every session the DM would total everything up and give out XP. Any time we didn't do that it became nearly impossible to account for everything.

 

[el-remmen]

I still run 1e, and my method is to award XP when an scenario is done and the characters are safely back at a port of haven where they can tabulate rewards and treasure, regardless of how many sessions it takes.

That gives players the chance to discuss loot division, which will affect how much XP is earned by the individual characters.

Do you have a sense if this was a common approach ("when a scenario is done and the characters are safely back at a port of haven") back then?

Also, even when I awarded XP for treasure, I divided it equally among the group no matter how they divided the actual treasure among themselves. I imagine that might cause either heated discussion or finagling of who gets treasure in order to bump them a level?

 

[pogre]

In the 1970s and early 1980s I used to occasionally go to the gaming club hosted at the University of Illinois. It was a heady time as there were luminaries of gaming dropping in all the time - Frank Chadwick was a frequent attendee from GDW over in Bloomington-Normal, Judges Guild guys from Decatur would drop in, Tom Wham stopped by a few times - you get the idea. As a young adult I just thought this was how it was everywhere.

There were tons of D&D games going back then and you could bring a character to almost any of the tables. We frequently took the same character and played in multiple D&D games with multiple DMs. This meant experience points were awarded by the DM (referee) after each session.

My experience was that this practice carried over when games became more set with the same group of PCs staying at the same tables.

 

[Musing Mage]

Do you have a sense if this was a common approach ("when a scenario is done and the characters are safely back at a port of haven") back then?

Also, even when I awarded XP for treasure, I divided it equally among the group no matter how they divided the actual treasure among themselves. I imagine that might cause either heated discussion or finagling of who gets treasure in order to bump them a level?

Well, that approach is by the book, so I imagine it was used by people somewhere, though back in the day even my own groups did it at the end of each session. I came to appreciate this way as being superior and easier for various reasons.

I am not a fan of interjecting to players how they divvy the loot - it's purely on them. Part of the fun and strategy is letting players figure out the math and decide who gets what and make choices. They usually try to keep things equal or fair, but once in a while a situation comes along where it won't be, usually if a powerful magic item is involved.

Case in point - my group years ago came across a wand of polymorph, and they could have sold it for enough cash to level them all up twice each. But they opted instead to let the wizard keep it so they'd have the power. He got the XP value of the item, everyone got their monster XP, though it was a hit compared to the vast reward they would have gotten. In the end that wand saved their lives so many times that any lingering doubt about the choice vanished.

Situations like that are as much a part of the game as anything else, and I love seeing it all play out.

 

[Guest 6801328]

End of session.

Which, when I was 15, sometimes meant 12+ hours.

 

[Marc_C]

1981-84 AD&D 1e. By the book at first but we got tired of the going back and forth to a safe heaven to earn the XPs. I started handing them out during the game after each encounter. Players really loved that. Later, let them level up in the dungeon, no training in town.

We had long discussions about the XP system. Every decision was made by the group.

 

[el-remmen]

There were tons of D&D games going back then and you could bring a character to almost any of the tables. We frequently took the same character and played in multiple D&D games with multiple DMs. This meant experience points were awarded by the DM (referee) after each session.

My experience was that this practice carried over when games became more set with the same group of PCs staying at the same tables.

I played a little in that era/expectation, too - but I seem to remember that if a character was still in the middle of an ongoing adventure at one person's table I would not bring them to another game with a different DM - but maybe that was just my own honorable sense of verisimilitude.